


Staring at the Ground

by Anglophile_Rin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Coping mechanism, Delusions, Forced Medication, Gen, Hallucinations, Major character death - Freeform, Mental Illness, Suicide, Trauma, seasons 1-4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:16:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anglophile_Rin/pseuds/Anglophile_Rin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchester life is fantastic, unimaginable, supernatural, unbelievable. Maybe there's a reason for that. </p>
<p>An alternate universe wherein Sam didn't make it and Dean has an extreme way of coping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staring at the Ground

Are you some kind of medicine man?  
Cut the demons out of my head  
You can’t kill something that’s already dead  
Just leave my soul alone

\- _Weighty Ghost_ , Wintersleep

At first, John didn't worry too much about it.

After all, at least he was talking. Those first few weeks the boy had refused to say a word, and John really wasn't sure what to do.

So, talking was good. It was an improvement, at least.

It just might be better if he wasn't talking to his dead baby brother like the kid was actually there.

***

John found a child psychologist who came highly recommended - a guy by the name of Dr. Robert Singer.

Dean sat down with Dr. Singer ("call me Bobby, boy, do I look like someone you should be calling 'Doctor'?") in a homey office stuffed full of old furniture, older books and a floor full of toy cars that the therapist broke out in order to entertain the four year old.

Dean told the man all about the monster who had come into their house and killed his mommy. He told him about how he had carried little Sammy outside, away from the fire in the baby's nursery. He told him it was his job to take care of Sammy now.

While Dean played, John told Bobby about how Dean had carried the baby out, but that Sam had already inhaled too much smoke and didn't last the night. He told him about how Dean stopped talking, and once he started again he would only talk to Sam, acting like he could even see and touch the boy. He told him about how Dean saw monsters everywhere now, and thought that John fought them when really John worked as a mechanic.

Bobby had looked at the boy sadly. He'd keep seeing Dean, talking to him. At this point it might do more harm than good to tear the fantasy away from the child, though. Most kids had imaginary friends, after all. Dean's just happened to be alive once upon a time.

***

When Dean was eleven, kids in the neighborhood started getting sick and dying. One of these kids was the little brother of the family next door. The death hit Dean hard and that night John had to physically restrain the boy as he screamed and hit at John, shouting about how Sammy almost died and it was all his fault; that a witch tried to kill him and Dean wasn't there.

John held on until Dean fell asleep. He brought his son to Bobby the next day, then got into a screaming match of his own when the doctor didn't want to medicate Dean. He piled the kid into the car and never went back.

***

Dean started reading about mythology and monsters, about demons and angels and gods old and new. He had just started high school, but was failing half his classes because he wouldn't read anything else - claiming he was a hunter, talking about the monsters he and John killed together.

He brought girls home but never the same girl twice. John would smile sadly when they'd mention Dean's little brother Sammy, the one he'd told them all about.

He found a new therapist, but Dean wouldn't talk to her.

***

When Dean was twenty-three, a doctor finally suggested they treat him for schizophrenia.

How was that possible, though? John demanded. He's been seeing his brother since he was four years old - four year olds don't have schizophrenia.

The doctor explained that there was a lot unknown about the brain, and about schizophrenia in particular. Maybe Dean had created a fantasy life, maybe his brain was trying to protect him with delusions, but schizophrenia was treatable and it was a place to start.

John and Dean got into a screaming match about taking the pills. They got into a lot of those, especially since Dean first became a teenager. They'd yell, call names, storm off in a huff. It always ended with Dean sadly asking John why he and Sam had to fight so much.

This one ended with John forcing the medication on his son. That night, Sammy went away.

***

Things were good - they were good for years. Dean saw a therapist, accepted the truth of his brother's death and how it happened. He took his medication regularly, and even got his GED.

Things were so good, in fact, that John only hesitated a little when Dean wanted to take the Impala and go on a road trip. He waved his son off as the twenty-six year old headed west.

His big mistake was breaking his cell phone two weeks into said trip.

Whether it was because he forgot without the reminder, or simply because he wanted to, Dean stopped taking his pills. He ended up in California, convinced that Sam had left the family for school three years prior, but that now - with John "missing" - he needed his brother back.

***

It took John a year to find his son. When he did, Dean was insisting that Sammy had been poisoned by a demon - which existed as black smoke outside of the human body - when he was a baby. That the demon was what had killed Mom. He claimed that John himself was hunting this demon, that they'd gotten close.

John tried to reason with him. Tried to get Dean to take his pills. Tried to tell him that Sam was dead, that John loved him, that he needed help

That was when Dean shot him.

***

Somehow John managed to get both himself and Dean into the car. He didn't want Dean driving - not when his delusions had taken such a turn for the violent.

It didn't matter, though. As it was, John managed to crash them just fine.

By the time he came to in the hospital, Dean had been committed to the psych ward.

***

They medicated Dean, of course they did. It took them eleven months to get the dosage right, though. Eleven months during which time Dean fought with an imaginary Sammy and never once recognized John when he came to visit. In fact, as he told eveb John himself, his father was dead.

And then they finally got the meds right.

Well, mostly right.

Dean wasn't talking to Sammy anymore - because he thought that Sammy was dead.

The boy sat in his room, refusing to eat, refusing to drink. Staring blankly at the spot where he saw the dead body of his baby brother. Over twenty years of grief jam packed into the span of two days.

John didn't find out until later, but a nurse named Lilith told Dean she could bring back his brother. All he needed to do was give her something in return.

Dean thought it was his soul.

She didn't care what he thought, so long as she got to sell his pills.

Funny thing about selling your soul, though. Eventually it was time to collect.

Most of the books said a demon deal lasted ten years, but

Dean must have been special.

Because Dean shredded his wrists after just one.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and lyrics at the beginning of the fic are both from Weighty Ghost by Wintersleep. 
> 
> Though I am a psychology graduate student, my area of focus is not in abnormal psychology, and so the symptoms and medical action taken in this fic should be taken as artistic license and not as strictly factual.


End file.
